Tag: lost

I’ve gone through several violent interruptions. Wake up calls I never saw coming. Wake up calls I saw coming. Reflection compounded upon reflection. A lingering pause allowing for second, third, even eighth levels of thinking about what to do now.

But would I wish my past year onto me? Yes. I’d never abandon what I’ve gone through. I wouldn’t trade it in for a ‘pleasant’ year at all.

What people say with cliche verbiage is true. If I didn’t go through hell, if I didn’t go through pain, if I didn’t go through terror, I’d never become who I am today.

The key word above is through. Coming out on the other side of it all doesn’t mean I’ve arrived at the formulaic movie ending where the climactic scene ties all loose ends together as the protagonist is surely changed for the better. Going through means I made it through the terrible occurrences. I’ve made it to some sort of ‘ok, that all really happened?!’ state of being.

The climatic scene isn’t here yet.

Going through is sort of like the part of the movie Castaway where Chuck Noland is finally rescued from the island he was stranded on for years. The suffering is finally over after all that time on the island, and in real time as the audience watched a man talk to a volleyball!

But now Chuck needs to get to Kelly Frears.

Off the island, surrounded by people, but still in a profound loneliness. A pain which needs fixing.

He is, however, not at all the same Chuck prior to the plane crash.

As I see what I’ve gone through over a year’s time, I realize the habits, rituals, and reactions to how things panned out are exactly the things carrying me into the next phase. I’m prepared in a way I never planned to be prepared.

This is exactly the point of another cliche. Lean in. Yes, lean into your situation, even if it is terrible and not what the trajectory was originally. Lean into the lessons learned. Lean into the new habits. Lean into how you survived, and carry the lessons learned not only into your new life but also into the lives of others.

My past year was an apprenticeship I didn’t sign up for. My future now contains endings I didn’t want either. But these climactic scenes will be more meaningful than I ever could have imagined had I not gone through it all.

The rhythmic pilgrimage cycles back today,
A ritual imprinting itself onto my heart
Not as relief but as duty,
My life as I have known it depends on it.

Surrounded by others settling into the camp,
We will come with our burdens, our expectations,
Our hopes which were spilled out across the grounds,
And love will rise from shattered pieces.

If this is only an autumn occurrence
Somehow I was not told of its ending in the winter,
Nor last spring, nor this summer,
As the place I journey to on this day forgot to stay
Inside its autumn home and wandered with me
Through seasons I’d wish upon not a single soul.
This ritual, this holy event, it haunted all year.

This day, this pilgrimage, hitched a ride back with me
It journeyed with me to come to my holy place,
And never let me alone till I finally said:
“Here is my crushed self,
Here is my true self,
Take it, I hope others will take it too.”

Do not rebuild my life in the exact same way it was before. It’s time for me to rebuild based on who I am growing into.

Author Maria Goff essentially summed up the main lesson from the past year of my life in her book Love Lives Here. In the excerpt below, she is referring to her family’s long-time cabin burning down to the ground. Everything inside of it was now gone, every item which contained countless memories. There was an instant temptation to rebuild the cabin exactly how it was before. As if the memories, the lessons, the warmth of friendships birthed and grown in the cabin could be rebuilt physically as well. However, with wisdom as the guide, Maria clarifies:

We’ll build something that will serve who we’ve become, not just repeat who we were. The biggest mistake we could all make in our lives [emphasis added] is to rebuild things we’ve outgrown or to live in constant fear that we might lose what we have all over again. It won’t be the fires that destroy our lives and our faith. It will be obsessing over not getting burned again that will.

Ouch. This drilled way down into me. I think dental work from the 1800’s would be less painful to endure than this quote.

Maria’s focus on two aspects of this strike me. The first is the temptation to rebuild things we’ve outgrown. It is hard to admit to defeat in an area in life. But it may be harder to pivot in an area of life because we have grown up since we first set out on the mission.

It could have been years ago when we decided on X, but the conditions we were in when the decision was made are no longer present. I could hold onto the romanticized version of the way I hoped it all would turn out when I started out on a venture. Or I could let the cold-water-splash-in-the-face take more of an effect than just sending shivers down my spine. The conditions are no where near the way they were before. There’s no good use utilizing old blueprints drawn up back then to start the process all over again now.

Her second emphasis is on the fear of building again at all. More poignant for me, this weighs heavy as I can carry the metaphor of not being burned again, or at all, to extremely fearful bounds. Something of great value was lost to Maria and her family. Yet, there was a resilience in building something new and different based on who they have become.

Not only will the cabin be new, but it will be built. I can paralyze myself just thinking of getting back up and trying again. But why try the exact same thing again? We all need to try again but in step with her first point, it will be different this time.

In a sense it will be different anyway, even if we want to start the same task or goal over the exact same way. We’ll have the experience of the failure with us. It will be a different time in our lives. We’ll maybe even be physically somewhere else. Regardless, if we start with new or old blueprints we must be willing to risk fire getting to our final product again.

Weren’t all the memories created in the first cabin worth it all anyway? That’s why we build again. But it’s also why we build based on who we are now.

Because you haven’t died yet
You can’t be swept into life,
You’ll always find that one lie,
That one distorted truth you value.
Take in the last of winter
Let it crush you and overwhelm you,
Spring will then be spring,
Not just a shift in the weather.
Passing through a night means
You are still moving,
So “Don’t tear your clothing in your grief,But tear your hearts instead.”